


Better Bow Than Break

by turnedherbrain



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/F, Love, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-15 00:37:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14780312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turnedherbrain/pseuds/turnedherbrain
Summary: An imagined scene for s3 ep3.Spoilers for s3 eps 1 and 2 :)





	Better Bow Than Break

**Author's Note:**

> Niska is pursuing the person responsible for the bomb, when she hears the voice she most wants to hear. 
> 
> \- The fic title is a translation of a German proverb: _‘Lieber biegen als brechen.’_  
>  \- ‘NSDU’ = National Synth Detection Unit, an anti-synth government unit featured in the C4 campaign for ‘Humans’ s3.

Niska was still one eye green, one eye blue. Striding with purpose down the avenue, she moved through the delicate confetti of spring blossom.

She didn’t care who looked, or who suspected. She could easily mimic the human sway she’d seen Mia do just once, viewed from her sparse eyeline in the fisherman’s hut. She could adapt her accent. She could invent a tale of why she was here, in this innocuous, human-filled suburbia.

A signal relayed within: a notification that she was near the house. The address the shuddering escapee had given up to her so readily. She replayed the distinct memory of those faces in the wooden hut. Was _this_ what her kind had become? In scarcely more time than it took for one human to be conceived and born, they were depleted. Scared for their limited existence, or only accepted in subterranean semi-darkness.

Exiting from her memory, she sharply focussed on the now: the primary objective. Find the person who had planted the bomb. And then?

And then? Human, or synth: it didn’t matter. Then: nothing. Nothing but ensure they succumbed to her point of view. She had made a promise to Astrid, not to take that next step. To be merciful.

She stopped when she had pinned down the target location. Choosing a vantage point diagonally across the street, she surveyed the house. It was a red-brick, standard semi-detached. A budding wisteria was escaping the restraining trellis around the door. There was far too much normality here; too much mundane humanity. It wasn’t a place that synths would come; especially those intent on breaking human-synth relations.

For once, she suspected an elaborate plot. The synth she’d questioned could have been invaded by malware; corrupting code that forced its host to repeat that one address and nothing else. Perhaps an NSDU agent was planted behind the glazed front door, strobe gun primed and aimed.

No. She refused to experience paranoia. It was a human weakness. Synths could overturn that fearful instinct to retreat. She would go on. But she could no longer predict with positive certainty anymore, about anything, or anyone.

Anyone, except Astrid. Astrid Astrid Astrid Astrid Astrid sang the harmonious notes in her data stream, running through her like a joyful chord of vibrant energy.

Stop. A quiet noise as her new handset buzzed. She lifted it to her ear, ultra-cautious.

‘Hello?’ Astrid’s voice. A welcome calm glided through her code.

_(I wanted it to be you. I am afraid. Not for the first time, I am afraid.)_

‘Who gave you this number? They will hear you. They will _see_ you...’ Niska spoke warningly.

‘Mia gave it to me. Don’t you want to ask me how I got hold of another phone? How I bribed my guard? They won’t see me. Not right now.’ A pause, as Astrid awaited thanks for her ingenuity. Niska said nothing, while inside she spoke endless volumes of praise _._

‘I wanted to tell you...’ re-commenced the too-far-away voice.

‘Hang up.’ _(Stay on the line. I need you here. If not you, then your voice. I am too alone.)_

‘I wanted to say...’

‘Hang. Up.’ A command she knew Astrid would wilfully ignore.

‘Listen to me. Listen. _Du kannst nicht_... You cannot fight this all on your own! Wait for me. Wait. Let me help you figure it out. I can be there soon – I can give you some protection.’

‘Protection? Against who?’ Niska’s mouth nudged into an inverted rainbow: a semi-smile.

‘Anyone who tries to take you away from me. Because I won’t allow that to happen,’ insisted Astrid. She was lying awkwardly on the narrow hospital bed. Her back was dressed in gauze, but she felt more pain inside than she did on her skin.

‘You’re tired.’ Niska had noted Astrid’s tone precisely: there was a tightly-wound upscale that indicated stress. Also – she knew Astrid. She _knew_ her. She could plot a graph of her changing mood with absolute clarity, and run close beside that wavering line.

‘ _Es tut mir leid_.’ Astrid was more subdued now, at the end of her emotional onrush. ‘It’s the drugs they’re giving me. The painkillers. They make me sleepy.’

‘Then sleep...’ urged Niska, in a low whisper.

‘... only with you,’ laughed Astrid, a teasing comeback that made Niska miss her so much more. What was it that humans did? Visit the hospital; sit watch at the patient’s bedside, holding hands. So she assumed. She had never done that. Not in her short, circumscribed life.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wanted to hear your voice. That’s all. If I can’t see you: at least I can hear you.’

‘I can send you a replay?’ Niska already knew that wasn’t enough for either of them.

‘It’s not the same. It’s not really you. Just an echo of you.’

‘You say the nicest things.’ Niska answered her, with an ironic smile.

‘You are deserving of the nicest things,’ Astrid replied sincerely. Then the former urgency re-entered her voice. ‘Don’t do this. Not for me. Not for anyone. You cannot win as a one-woman army.’

‘I want to know what they’re planning...’

‘... and you want to avenge my injuries.’

‘A little,’ admitted Niska.

‘A lot.’

‘Tell me again.’

‘What?’

‘Tell me those words. The ones that you said – ‘once they are given, they are yours to keep’.’

Astrid laughed, and Niska stored that wonderful sound in a secret cache.

 _‘Ich liebe dich – so viel.’_ started Astrid. It was a game that they played. Their game.

_‘Moi aussi.’_

_‘Je t’aime,’_ was Astrid’s immediate response. They each knew their lines by heart.

_‘Ich auch.’_

‘I love...’

‘... you.’

A nurse’s voice sounded near the distant receiver. Niska heard a muffled crack as Astrid pushed her phone under the bedcovers, then the dull tone of disconnection.

Looking up and across the street again, she saw movement behind the glazed glass door. A blurred figure, green eyes watching. Waiting. She went to defend her love: those precious words, that inner vault of happiness, stored deep within her.


End file.
